Government climatologists in New Zealand (NZ) last week won a major courtroom victory against skeptic plaintiffs when a high court judge declined to order scientists to release their data. But fresh legal analysis points to a new courtroom strategy to circumvent the kiwi government’s failure to honor a promise to release hotly contested global warming evidence.

Last Friday the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCSET) was defeated in their legal challenge to compel government scientists to reveal anomalies in their nation’s unofficial “official” climate record. Because a court permitted the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research of New Zealand (NIWA) to break a promise to reveal key evidence the judge was able to rule that NZCSET had failed to prove their case.

The man-made global warming skeptics of NZCSET had initiated this judicial review after they saw that their nation’s climatologists had inexplicably grafted a warming trend onto the country’s raw temperatures using dubious statistical techniques. For over three years the controversy grew and NZ’s National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) resorted to hiding/destroying data. In 2010 – to ameliorate the controversy – NIWA was compelled to approach the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) to undertake an independent and open external peer review. Thereby, under ministerial order the government anticipated that the methodology and documentation of the disputed Seven Station Temperature Series (7SS) data file would be vindicated and the full Aussie review would be put on show. But last Friday, because NIWA (and the National Party government) had belatedly renegade on their promise, the judicial review found their was insufficient evidence to sustain the skeptics’ courtroom claims.

But the judge involved holds a substantial carbon trading interest which supports accusations of a conflict of interest precluding his participation.

Auckland High Court Justice Geoffrey J. Venning has triggered a fresh climate scandal after it was revealed he owns a forest company (Tahakopa) that is registered under the Emission Trading Scheme to sell carbon credits for profit. The judge had just given a shock ruling that “the methodology applied by NIWA was in accordance with internationally recognised and credible scientific methodology.”

With his track record in controversy Venning is no stranger to scandal having already been subjected to investigation by the country’s Judicial Conduct Commissioner on conflict of interest charges. Ordinarily, any self-respecting judge would recuse himself from such a watershed judicial review of his nation’s disputed climate record to ensure justice is not only served, but is seen to be served. That won’t happen here. Instead Justice Venning boldly orchestrated more of a tragic comedy than a confluence of impartial judicial wisdom. One well-placed barrister is less than complimentary: “He [Venning] hasn’t met a law yet that he couldn’t breach with a smile on his face.”

This ruling is especially inflammatory because it gives judicial authority for Venning’s government employers to keep secret the methods used by (government) climatologists to tack on an unsubstantiated and additional 0.5C of warming onto the nation’s temperature record. Plaintiffs in the case, the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust (NZCET) have yet to announce how they will respond.

New Zealand skeptics of man-made global warming score historic legal victory as discredited government climate scientists perform U-turn and refuse to allow a third party peer-review report of official temperature adjustments to be shown in court. Skeptic lawyers move for sanctions likely to prove fatal to government’s case.

New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) are reeling after what may prove a fatally embarrassing admission that it is breaking a solemn undertaking given to parliament. NIWA had assured ministers that it would disclose a third party peer-reviewed report of its science for courtroom verification as part of its defense against a petition in the case of NZ Skeptics-v-NIWA.

NIWA’s decision renders an almighty self-inflicted wound to the government agency’s already dire credibility. But worse, the move will be regarded as contempt of court and thus permits the court to grant the plaintiff’s motions for punitive sanctions, including summary judgment. As such, this would bring a swift victory for skeptics with profound legal ramifications around the world. In the sparsely-measured southern hemisphere the New Zealand climate data is critical to claims about a verified global temperature record.

A climate change group has taken the National Institute for Atmospheric and Water Research (NIWA) to court over what they say are inaccurate temperature recordings.

The New Zealand Climate Education Trust - a branch of the NZ Climate Science Coalition - are challenging NIWA figures which show a rise in temperatures in New Zealand of 1degC over the past 100 years.

This figure is significantly higher than global warming figures around the world and the trust is questioning how NIWA calculated the figures and whether they are accurate.

It believes there has either been no warming or a trivial warming of around 0.2degC.

The group's lawyer Terry Sissons told the High Court at Auckland today that NIWA could have obtained inaccurate New Zealand average temperatures due to 'sudden site relocations' and by regularly changing temperature gauging instruments.

“New Zealand’s temperature record is a dog’s breakfast” says the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, commenting on its finding that average temperatures have remained stable for the last 150 years. “And it underscores our vulnerability to NIWA’s monopoly of official advice on climate science.

“In a lengthy and expensive review, NIWA has rearranged the historical data to exactly match the warming trend shown in its previous official record” said Hon Barry Brill, chairman of the Coalition.

“Our paper has exposed the review’s total lack of credibility:

§ It runs counter to all the historical records regarding “NZ average temperatures,”, including those compiled in 1867, 1920, and 1964. The archive shows that current temperatures are slightly cooler than those of 150 years ago.

§ Its trend outcome is heavily influenced by data from Auckland and Wellington stations which are declared in the peer-reviewed literature to be contaminated and to show false warming; and it fails to adjust for UHI at any of the six non-rural stations.

§ It uses adjustments derived from comparisons between “isolated stations” in direct defiance of the scientific authorities.

§ It radically departs from the statistical techniques laid down by its chosen precedent, Rhoades & Salinger. Correctly applied, those techniques demonstrate that New Zealand has experienced no material warming trend during the past century.

In a shock move a discredited global warming scientist implicated in climate fraud is appointed to a top job at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Jim Salinger, one of the scientists suspected of criminal misconduct in the Climategate scandal has been elected to the prestigious role of President of the Commission for Agricultural Meteorology of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Climate skeptics are aghast at the news.

Salinger remains a suspected accomplice in the tight knit international clique of climatologists involved in the data corruption scandal at the University of East Anglia (UEA), England. Commenting on that ongoing criminal probe, Senior Investigating Officer (SIO), Detective Superintendent Julian Gregory said:

“This has been a complex investigation, undertaken in a global context and requiring detailed and time consuming lines of enquiry. Due to the sensitivity of the investigation it has not been possible to share details of enquiries with the media and the public and it would be inappropriate for us to comment any further at this time.”

Pointedly, Salinger had been an employee of the UEA before his appointment at the New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). But was fired after the Climategate scandal hit the headlines. In an ironic twist it’s the Kiwi government department now trumpeting his new WMO appointment on the NIWA website.

Joe Olson of the Slayers group of skeptics was quick to comment, “This is how the greens recycle their 'waste' – it gets turned into valuable 'compost.’ Can he possibly be embarrassed into retirement? ”

The justification for the Government’s proposed carbon tax and the recently reported expenditure of $5.5 billion on combating man-made global warming (AGW) is based on the official temperature record.

The official temperature record is produced by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM). The BoM produces the temperature record by adjusting the raw temperature data so that temperature trends can be seen. The BoM temperature record shows an increasing temperature trend over the 20th century.

The method of adjusting the raw data by BoM is similar to the method used in New Zealand. In New Zealand the temperature record is produced by the National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA). Recently a group of scientists has taken legal action against NIWA for improper manipulation of the temperature record. The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition found that NIWA had adjusted raw data which showed only a slight increase of 0.006 degrees Centigrade to an increase of 0.9 degrees. In effect no increase at all had been manipulated to show an increase consistent with AGW.

Last November, I reported on accusations from New Zealand that a government agency called NIWA — New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research – had cooked the books on global warming. According to global warming skeptics at the Climate Conversation Group and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, the country’s temperatures had not climbed over the last century, as graphs produced by the agency claimed. Based on the actual raw data for the last century, New Zealand’s temperature has been steady over that same period.

The skeptics took the agency to court to demonstrate that it had cooked the books. Their Statement of Claim, filed on behalf of the New Zealand Climate Science Education Trust, asked the High Court to determine that the New Zealand Temperature Record was invalid and to stop NIWA from providing this invalid data to any governmental authority that might use it to set policy. In this way, the plaintiffs hoped to prevent New Zealand from setting a global warming policy on the basis of flawed science.

Last month, NIWA filed its own Statement of Defence, and it was startling. Yes, NIWA declared, it did publish temperature data called the New Zealand Temperature Record, or NZTR as it was widely known, but it was not required to do so by law.

“There is no ‘official’ or formal New Zealand Temperature Record;” the Statement of Defence went on, the temperature record merely being “an informal description for a collection of different streams of climate information.”

Next question: Should the New Zealand government base its official climate change policy on an informal, unofficial data set?

Act III to come.

LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and the author of The Deniers.

New Zealand’s government via its National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has announced it has nothing to do with the country’s “official” climate record in what commentators are calling a capitulation from the tainted climate reconstruction.

NIWA’s statement claims they were never responsible for the national temperature record (NZTR).The climb down is seen as a dramatic legal triumph for skeptics of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) who had initiated their challenge last August when petitioning the high court of New Zealand to invalidate the weather service’s reconstruction of antipodean temperatures.

According to NZCSC, climate scientists cooked the books by using the same alleged ‘trick’ employed by British and American doomsaying scientists. This involves subtly imposing a warming bias during what is known as the ‘homogenisation’ process that occurs when climate data needs to be adjusted.

» How much "Man Made" CO2 Is In The Earth's Atmosphere?
I think ALL of the CO2 in the Earth's Atmosphere is from man.
I'm not sure how much "Man Made" CO2 is in the Earth's Atmosphere.
There is .04% CO2 in the Earth's Atmosphere and of that "Man" has added an extra 4% (1 part in 62,500)